Marketing Tips Blog

Can Buying Installs Aid Organic App Ranking?

Mark Anderson - Thursday, May 07, 2015

In regular Google SEO, paid links and advertising are negative
link-building signals, but sometimes Google works with double standards.
It seems both Google Play and the iOS App Store love all your installs,
paid or not. Effectively, buying your app install base makes you rank
in popularity lists, rank for great keywords in app search, and gets you
the attention of popular review sites. Each bought install will get you
at least two free organic installs as an indirect result. Time your app
promotion well! [Source: SearchEngineWatch.com]

App Store Optimization Competition

2015 has already proven to be a great year for mobile apps,
but I seldom detect a similar strategy as the one described in this
article from any of my competitors. This is quite surprising because the
basics behind it were already disclosed in 2012 and it is still very effective.

The Organic Factor

App promotion uses a so-called organic factor in its CPI (cost per
install) calculations. Where you can easily pay someone up to $ 2 CPI
for each new app install they initiate by promoting the app, you might
actually be paying $0.50 for the resulting installs because it leads to
four instead of one install. Few of these installs can be directly
linked to an individual CPI source, but scaling up your effort should
show the same (or better) incremental growth.

Organic installs are the result of many different factors. Once you
reach a certain critical mass or grow many installs in a short
timeframe, the organic factor increases dramatically because of:

Popularity lists for specific categories use install trending and
you can even aim for the generic popular apps for a specific country
when you time install spikes correctly

Some functionality in your app can work contagious

Any viral message related to the app is much more likely to be successful

Using This to Your Advantage

Aim for multiple install spikes and stop focusing on a steady growth.
Use all types of platforms for which you can calculate the advertising
cost back to a cost per install. Paying on a CPM or CPC basis is fine as
long as you know what each install costs you. Use in-app promotion,
paid popularity lists and reviews, well-targeted social adds,
retargeting, and many other forms of advertising and spend a large
portion of your budget in a very small timeframe.

Plan ahead toward a single week or even a single day and repeat this
about a month after the first peak. Keep some of your budget flexible.
Fine-tune all your app metrics, so you can relocate budgets toward the
most effective channels during the campaigns.

Tip: One country at a time! Many app store popularity factors
work individually per country. Choose to be popular in at least one
country instead of remaining unseen by spreading your focus.

Not Just Chance

The organic factor isn’t just based on chance. You can promote
mouth-to-mouth or social sharing with some app functionality, you can
bribe popular app reviewers to write about you (and others will follow
for free), you can start your own rumor about the app, and you can
definitely take more matters into your own hands. Combine these with
successful advertising and your app is likely to beat all its
competitors.